Why We Hate (and Love) Personal Responsibility
The stories we tell about how the world works reveal a lot about our needs and fears.
I’m going to tell you two stories about your life.
This is the first story: your life is unfair. Life made a victim of you, by inflicting trauma, injustice or oppression wherever you made an attempt at flourishing. The cards are stacked against you, by ignorant people and indifferent systems that view your life as disposable and your happiness as irrelevant. This world is toxic and insane.
Your suffering is not of your making. None of this was your fault, and those who think you should be doing more to make yourself happy are ignoring the very real circumstances beyond your control, not to mention the ways they actively contribute to your suffering.
This is the second story: your life is what you make of it. In every moment, you choose whether to increase your suffering or your joy. You live by beliefs, conscious and unconscious, that impact what choices you see as possible for you to make. You can expand your choices by becoming conscious of your beliefs and behavior, by choosing thoughts and actions that lead you to greater confidence, self-acceptance and happiness.
